


Blessed Protector

by Angelise (angelise7)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Humor, M/M, Our guys have moved into a house! OMG!, Pet fluff, Present time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 01:19:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4587552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelise7/pseuds/Angelise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim has decided a certain member of the Sandburg-Ellison family needs surgery. Pronto!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blessed Protector

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written in this fandom in years, Years I say! ;-) 
> 
> This piece originated in 2005. I wrote the first section and for some now forgotten reason put it on the shelf, unfinished. I was moving into other fandoms (NCIS) and basically wrote it off. In my pursuit of including all my fiction in this archive, I discovered it in an obscure folder and decided to finish it. To be honest I allowed it to distract me from a series I'm reluctant to finish. 
> 
> Now, because it has been a decade since I’ve written anything Sentinel, you may find some canon/fanon errors. (Let me know if you do!) My memory is not what it used to be and many of the Sentinel resource websites I depended upon to check my facts are gone. For this piece I have moved our characters into present time and provided them with a new home. I mean really, they couldn’t live in Jim’s loft forever!

“I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, too sexy . . .”

Refusing to open his eyes at such an ungodly hour, Jim stretched his arms over his head and continued listening to his mate's early morning serenade. 

“I’m too sexy for my bod, too sexy for my bod, too sexy . . .”

“You got that right, Chief.”

A rare smile of contentment took shape on his face as he lazily stroked his morning erection. Smearing the first drops of pre-come around the head, he imagined smearing the same along Blair’s bottom lip and then ever so slowly licking it off. The erotic image caused more natural lubrication to leak out, slicking both his hand and his increasingly hardening shaft. 

“I’m too sexy for my mouth, too sexy for my mouth, too sexy . . .”

Blair was now ad-libbing and Jim was tempted to yell for him to bring his too sexy mouth to bed and allow one extremely horny Sentinel to fuck it to the max.

Trying a little ad-libbing of his own, he began to hum, “I’m so hot for Blair’s mouth, so hot for Blair’s mouth, so fucking hot . . .”

He continued to masturbate to the sounds of Blair working through his morning rituals, taking great pleasure in the specific sound of fingers untangling long, thick strands of damp hair. The very thought of his Guide’s sexy curls tangled around his erection was almost enough to push him over the edge, and he was in the process of reaching for his hole, wishing nothing more than to indulge himself in a little one on one fuck fest, when he felt the weight of an intense gaze upon him. 

Cracking one eye open, he searched the room, hoping against hope for the arrival of Blair and his too sexy mouth. Mount Vesuvius was ready to erupt and he knew without a doubt that Blair would hate missing out on such a spectacular sight.

When his initial scrutiny of the room proved Blair-less, he extended his senses and discovered he was sharing his moment of self-indulgence with the youngest member of the Sandburg-Ellison household. 

“I’m not getting up to feed you, Taz. That’s Blair’s job.”

Disbelieving eyes peeked over his left hip and engaged him in a game of ‘You blink, you lose, I get fed.’ Never one to back down from a blatant challenge, he embarked in a battle of wills with his feline bedmate. 

Now, it’s one thing to play the game as a normal human with normal senses; it’s entirely something different and distressing and dangerous to do if you’re a Sentinel with hypersensitive eyeballs that can feel every waft of air, every herbal-scented moisture laden droplet *and* every wandering hair from ‘you know who.’

“Okay! Okay! You win!”

A superior lift of a non-existent eyebrow and wrinkle of a disdainful nose acknowledged his surrender.

“You can quit your gloating, Fuzz-Meister. I’m still not getting up to feed you.” Closing his watering eyes to block out the haughty stare aimed in his direction, he resumed the task he had set for himself earlier. 

Now, unbeknownst to Cascade’s normally astute Sentinel, his refusal to feed the current Master of the Universe placed his life in extreme peril, and he was not aware of his monumental error until he felt a shift in air currents directly above his re-awakened erection. His life as a future eunuch flashed before him when he forced one eye open and saw the paw with claws extended was reaching for his Johnson.

“Touch it and you die,” he warned *Blair’s* cat.

Of course, he forgot that all Masters come equipped with nine lives and the threat of losing one was essentially no threat at all. His scream of pain lifted the roof right off the rafters and brought Blair, wet hair and all, running butt-naked into the room.

“What’s wrong? Jim! Are you okay? Jim?”

Jim rose from the floor on the opposite side of the bed, holding his wounded weapon in one hand and a totally unrepentant and, if I might add, smirking Taz in the other. 

“Either the claws go or I go. Your choice.”

He stared in open-mouth amazement as Blair, instead of comforting his Blessed Protector, reached for Taz who was now wearing an extremely aggrieved look on his face -- a look which naturally laid the blame for *everything* squarely on Jim’s broad shoulders. 

“Now, Jim, you know Taz would never deliberately hurt you. What happened?” Blair took a closer look at him and that little lightbulb of comprehension clicked on. “You were jerking off, weren’t you? Had your giant redwood standing proud and tall? Jim,” Blair tsk’d, “It’s like waving a red flag at a raging bull. Taz only did what came naturally.”

The anthropologist tucked Taz closer, scratching behind his ears and nuzzling his neck. “Poor baby. Bet you only tapped Jim’s tweeter. It’s not your fault the big, bad Sentinel over-reacted. He’s got these crazy senses and just can’t help acting a little crazy at times.”

“Over-reacted? OVER-reacted!?” Jim glanced down at his deflated erection and the scratch that with Sentinel vision, took on major, MAJOR proportions. “How in the hell would you react if Feline Freddie sliced a hunk out of your tweeter? Besides, I wasn’t doing a thing, not a damn thing.” 

Sudden heat suffused his cheeks and all of a sudden he was too embarrassed to confess he had indeed not only been masturbating but had been too damn lazy to haul his ass out of bed and feed the cat.

Blair held his silence but the look he gave him clearly indicated he thought he was full of shit. 

‘Damn straight you better not say anything,’ Jim thought. ‘Not if you know what’s good for you, your mouth and that sexy ass of yours.’

Speaking of mouths, he took note of the definite smirk on his lovebunny’s delectable lips and was about to call Blair on it when the younger man turned around and headed toward the kitchen still crooning to their menacing furball of a pet.

“How ‘bout I give you a special treat for breakfast, FuzzWuzz? There’s some leftover steak in the fridge, and I’m absolutely sure Jim won’t mind sharing it with you. Right, Jim?”

He knew better than to argue with the searing blue gaze pinning him in place, but still he gave it a try, “I was gonna have that steak for lunch, babe.”

“Well, now you’re not. I’ll leave you the egg salad pita sandwich I made earlier. You can chow down on that and think on how you’re going to make it up to our sweet baby here.”

‘Egg salad with God knows what green fungus thrown in for good measure? Don’t think so.’ Jim opened his mouth to protest but the sight of Blair’s retreating ass declared their discussion finis, and he was forced to watch a lip-licking, tail-flicking Monarch of Mayhem carried lovingly toward the kitchen.

“The claws gotta go, Chief,” he yelled after Blair. “No discussion. I’ve had all the furniture shredding, wall scratching and naked flesh nail-piercing I can handle. Those claws are history. Make the appointment today.” 

“Jim, do I need to remind you of the current studies that indicate---”

“Today, Blair. End of discussion. To . . . day!”

He crawled back in bed and wisely turned down his hearing so that his sleep wouldn’t be disturbed by the countless curses being heaped upon his head. Blair knew several languages and there was no telling how long it would be before he ran out of ways of calling him a bastard.

 

+++++++

 

“Sandburg-Ellison residence. The cuter and smarter of the two speaking.”

“How is he?”

Jim ignored the exasperated sigh he could hear and the rolling of the eyes he could imagine. “Well?”

“He’s the same as he was the last time you called, which by the way was exactly 53 minutes ago. He’s asleep!”

He held the phone away from his ear for a total of three seconds. “Don’t get your g-string in a wad, Chief. I’m just checking in ‘cause you said the vet indicated Taz had a pretty rough time with the anesthesia.” He tossed the new rookie he was training his pair of handcuffs and waited until the young woman had cuffed the perp they were currently using as a chair. “Is it now a crime to be a concerned pet owner?”

“There’s concerned and then there’s concerned, Jim, and you’ve taken it to a new level. Geese Louise, we’ve only been home three hours and you’ve already called five times.”

“And if I hadn’t called you’d have me labeled as the most Insensitive Man on Earth.”

“Hey, you’re the one who insisted on the de-clawing in the first place. Not me.”

“Thanks, Kate.” He rose to his feet and with an embarrassed but grateful smile, reclaimed possession of his weapon. “You’re not the one with the injured woody.”

“For heaven’s sake, Jim, be a man. Suck it up. It was only a tiny scratch, and knowing you, you more than likely deserved it and more.”

Fully prepared to defend his actions once more, he opened his mouth but was cut off by his unsympathetic mate. 

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got things to do. Why don’t you go catch some bad guys.”

Jim glanced at the three men he and Kate had handcuffed to the grill of his Ford truck. “Been there, done that, Chief,’ he told Blair with a wry smile.

“Good for you, oh Great One.”

One of the men arrested committed the grievous error of spitting on his beloved truck and got his ear boxed in return. The swift punishment reminded him of something. “Scratch Taz’s ears for me, babe. You know how much he loves that.”

“What? No love scratching for me. I’m hurt.”

“If you can find your ears in that mop you call hair, scratch away.”

“Love you too, Jim.”

“Same here, Chief, and as soon as I get these bad men booked, I’ll be on my way home.”

“It’s your turn to cook in case you’ve forgotten,” Blair reminded him.

“How’s Chinese take-out sound?” He opened the driver’s side door and gazed at the picture of Blair and Taz he had clipped to the visor. 

“Fantastic.” Blair began to hum a familiar lullaby that was soon accompanied by Taz’s purring and Jim felt his heart turn to mush. Damn!

“Okay, babe. Call me if you or Taz need anything.” Turning his attention to the black and white arriving on the scene, he almost missed his mate’s last instruction.

“Jim! Wait!”

“Huh?” He nodded to Kate as she went by with Bad Man #1. If the man stumbled over a certain Sentinel’s foot on the way to the waiting patrol car and fell to his knees on the rock-strewn ground, well, served him right for spitting on said Sentinel’s truck.

“Litter. We need that special shredded paper litter for Taz to use until the stitches are out.”

“Got it. Litter and Dinner for my two best boys.”

“Say bye-bye to Big Jim, Taz.”

Jim frowned at the hairball hacking sound that ended their conversation. Seemed he had a long way to go before a certain declawed feline forgave him.

 

++++++

 

“What happened to ‘no rain’ this evening?” Jim wrestled his way inside their new home and, with a sigh of relief, dumped everything on the antique kitchen table Blair had found at a recent estate sale. If the damp stack of newspaper landed on one of Blair’s tomes of anthropology, well, so be it. A certain somebody should have taken care of obtaining all necessary supplies for Taz’s recovery and not expected a certain ‘other’ somebody to make a stop in the pouring rain. So there!

Blair came down the hallway dressed in a pair of loose fitting shorts and an old-as-the-hills Cascade PD sweatshirt that Jim was more than certain had been confiscated from the box of clothes he was donating to Goodwill.

“Fresh from Mrs. Chiang’s with a little extra thrown in for our recovering patient. Seems the news of Taz’s surgery has traveled far and wide.” He indicated the cardboard carton containing several containers of Chinese take-out. “Not only does Taz have his own box of fresh chicken tenders, but Mrs. Chiang also included a hand-sewn blanket her niece made for him.”

He began unloading the food containers. “How exactly does everyone know about Taz’s surgery? Several people at work stopped me on the way out, asking about the ugly furball.”

The Look, the one that chastised him for calling their adored pet by anything other than his given name, was directed at him. He simply answered with a face-splitting grin that informed his mate that the Look no longer worked on him. Unfortunately it was a fanciful belief that was disproved by Blair on a daily basis.

“Facebook.” Blair took a moment to inhale the delicious scents drifting up from the containers Jim was opening before pointing at the iPad tablet lying on the kitchen counter. “I’ve been updating Taz’s Facebook page on a regular basis today.”

Jim stopped what he was doing and stared in stunned amazement at his mate. “You’re kidding me right? Scuzz the Buzz has a Facebook page?”

Blair made grabby hands for the vegetarian eggrolls Jim was holding in his hands. “Where have you been these past half a decade? Taz has had a Facebook page since the day we brought him home from the shelter. Last count, he had over 350 friends.”

“What the fuck!?!” Jim dropped the eggrolls in Blair’s greedy hands and moved to the tablet. “How did he acquire that many friends? I’ve only got 27. How did he get 350?”

Blair rolled his eyes while licking crumbs from his fingers. “Uh . . . duh!” He pointed in the direction of the bedrooms. “Sweet, adorable Taz versus grumpy old You. Do the math, Genius.”

“But I’m a person. He’s just a cat.” Ignoring the huff of extreme displeasure, Jim clicked on the Facebook folder labeled ‘Friends.’ “You’re shitting me, right?” 

A majority of his co-workers, present and past were friends, along with Naomi -- of course, his eccentric mother-in-law would be friends with his cat -- Taz was her one and only grandchild. There was also Carol, his ex-wife, his brother, Stephen and Sally, Orvelle and several of members of the Jags basketball team, the mayor’s wife . . . “The Mayor? As in the Mayor of Cascade?”

Blair shrugged his shoulders before entering the kitchen to grab plates and utensils. “What can I say? Lydia volunteers at the shelter where we found Taz. She’s one of his biggest fans.”

Jim shook his head in defeat. There was no understanding the idiocy of some people. 

“Speaking of our resident demon child, where is he?” He clicked on the photos link and again found himself stunned by the number of pictures featuring his, HIS, cat with other people. Quickly checking to see if Blair was looking, he sent a pic of Taz and Sally to his personal email account, along with one of Taz and Naomi. He loved his mother-in-law despite her unorthodox anti-establishment behavior.

Getting no answer from his mate, he extended his senses and frowned when he noted the sound of purring coming from the master bedroom. “Chief, you better tell me that cat isn’t sleeping in our bed.”

“Okay, Jim. That cat *isn’t* sleeping in our bed.” Blair licked duck sauce off his lips before letting loose a grin of total defiance.

“Asshole.”

Blair snatched another eggroll. “Sue me. We both needed a nap and you know how comfy our new Tempurpedic mattress is.”

Jim started for the rear of the house. Before he made it to the hallway, his hand shot out and snatched Taz’s new blanket out of the air. “Sentinel Super Cop, babe.”

“Now who’s the asshole?”

“Yours, if you play your cards right.”

He quietly entered the master bedroom, using his senses to catalogue Taz’s condition. The scent of the anesthetic gas caused him to dial down his sense of smell but not low enough that he couldn’t detect the specific odor that would indicate a possible infection. 

Once he was next to the bed he utilized his heightened eyesight to check the tiny surgical incisions and the stitches holding them closed. Finding nothing amiss, he carefully laid down next to the sleeping feline.

“How’s my Scooter Booter?” he softly inquired. Knowing full well he was a total sap for the cat, he spent several minutes petting Taz’s lax body. “I know Blair’s not happy with me about this but, Scooter, those claws had to go. The damage to the furniture alone (his leather recliner to be specific), not to mention those hardwood floors, was reason enough.” 

He lightly tickled the area behind Taz’s left ear. “I’ll make it up to you, don’t worry. Got some chicken from Mrs. Chiang’s for tonight’s dinner. And tomorrow . . .” He rested his fingers on the cat’s vibrating chest and allowed a smile that would have melted Blair’s heart if he’d been watching. “Tomorrow I’ll pick you up some fresh tuna from the fish market on the way home from work.”

After a moment of resynching the bond between Sentinel and his cherished feline cohort, Jim placed the newly acquired blanket over Taz’s body and settled in for a nap of his own. He had barely closed his eyes when the sound of yelling jerked him upright.

“James Joseph Ellison! What the hell is this?!?!”

Hurrying to the doorway, he looked out and discovered an irate Blair holding the stack of newspapers he’d brought home. Before he could utter a word, his mate held up one hand.

“If you think you’re gonna save money by using *this* for litter, you’ve got another thought coming.”

Jim scratched his head in confusion. “Chief, the guy at the pet store said I was wasting my money buying that organic crap. Said shredded newspaper would work just fine.”

Blair tossed the stack of newspaper on the floor. “I’m going next door to check on Mr. Lepkowsky. His arthritis is acting up and I promised to take Mr. Wiggles out for his nightly walk.” He pointed to the newspapers. “When I get back, you and that stack of trash better be gone. Gone as in gone to the store and buying what I sent you for in the first place.”

“It’s raining.” Jim whined -- yeah, the mighty Sentinel of the City wasn’t too ashamed to whine if it kept him from getting wet.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Blair shouldered his way into his waterproof parker. “Get your ass in gear, Jim. The store will be closing in about an hour.”

Jim looked over his shoulder and discovered Taz was wide awake and cleaning his now weaponless paws. For a moment he swore the cat was smirking at him – smirking as in -- You, Jim Ellison are a mere minion, while I, Taz, Supreme Ruler of All, can and will make your life a living hell. 

“Keep it up, my friend, and that promise of tuna will be null and void.”

A haughty flick of the ear was his only answer, accompanied by Blair’s deliberate slamming of the front door.

“The things I put up with for the men I love.”

 

+++++++

 

“Quit your whining. It’s just a cold.”

“Cold, hell! More like pneumonia. You sent me out in the pouring rain!”

“You are such a baby. That was way last week. And you *don’t* have pneumonia.”

Blair shoved an obnoxious smelling mug of God knows what at him. He took a sip and started to gag at the taste but aborted said gag the second he caught sight of his mate’s glare. 

“Okay, okay,” he croaked. “I’ll drink it.”

Blair petted him on the head before indicating his watch. “I’ll be home as soon as my last class is finished. Keep your phone nearby, and I’ll call right before I leave to see if you need anything.”

His mate took a moment to scratch Taz behind his ears before collecting his well-worn leather briefcase. “Soup’s in the fridge, along with a glass of freshly made Sandburg Supreme Smoothie. I expect both containers to be empty by the time I return.”

Jim caught Taz’s eye and muttered, “Empty as in Smoothie down the toilet, right?”

Taz declined to answer. He knew which side his bread was buttered.

With a kiss to his chapped lips and gentle bump of forehead against forehead, Blair was gone.

Jim grouched about everything under the sun for nearly a quarter of an hour before Mr. Sandman’s grasp tugged at him. Right before he fell asleep, he felt a weight settle on his chest. Cracking one eye open, he found Taz settling down for a nap.

“This is all your fault, you know.”

Taz licked a paw and began grooming his whiskers. The flick of a tail indicated he knew the real villain of this story.

“Damn cat,” Jim grumbled.

A set of rear claws sunk themselves into territory south of his belt.

“Oh shit.”

 

The end . . . Not!

**Author's Note:**

> I currently provide housing for THREE rulers of the universe. All are rescues and manage to lead me on a daily adventure. Taz, unfortunately, is no longer with us. In fact, now that I'm thinking on this, pretty sure the story was begun as a tribute to him. He was one awesome sidekick!
> 
> And yes, every one of those names have come out of my mouth at some time or another!
> 
> Thanks always for reading!!!
> 
> And . . . [You can follow me and my eclectic tastes on Tumblr!](http://angelise7.tumblr.com/)


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